Youths swiftly clambered on top of their makeshift homes, craning their heads to monitor the battle unfolding on the flat Syrian plains before them.

Suddenly the bursts of gunfire from the horizon grew constant and close. "There is shooting, there is shooting, run, move inside," said one mother urgently grabbing her child.

As pitched battles unfold on the Syrian-Turkish border between rebel fighters and Syrian government troops, thousands of families who had fled the violence in Syria risk once again being plunged into the violence of civil war.

Deep inside the complex, a man calling himself Hamoud pointed to the home of a family whose son had been injured in an attack on Monday that wounded at least five people. The bullet had penetrated the wall, and smashed though the window.

Related Articles

Mahmoud spoke as his wife prepared tea on a hotplate resting on a plastic box. He said: "We have been here four weeks, but we just don't feel safe."

In a camp of several thousand, distinguishing between civilians and men who have taken up arms is almost impossible. As the violence spills across the border, so have the politics of the Syrian uprising.

"Spies" for the Syrian regime exist in the camp, said a refugee named Sami. "We take photographs of them and pass them pictures to fighters across the border. If the Free Syria Army sees them in Syria, they kill them".

Fear of persecution permeates the camp. As Sami, and Hamoud and others spoke to The Daily Telegraph, they removed their sim cards from their mobile phones, fearing that the regime may be able to listen in. Abu Mohammed fled across the border to Kilis camp after a spell in prison. "I want nothing more than to go home. Here my children are terrorised," he said. "Two of my boys are too afraid to sleep from the shooting and it is making them ill. I had a beautiful home in Syria. But I know that if I go back and Bashar al-Assad is not dead, then it will be me and my family who will die," he said.